Friday, March 19, 2010

So much is going on today - the health care vote, the situation involving the arrest of the activists who chained themselves to the White House fence (there was more than one) in protest of DADT, and a certain attorney general in Virginia who, like the rest of his cohorts in the religious right, seems to be so obsessed with his definition of "gay acts," that it's clouding his mind.

But it's Friday and that means time for another segment of my Know Your LGBT History. For this segment, I decided to spotlight THE penultimate movie in lgbt movie history, The Boys in the Band.

The Boys in the Band (1970), originally an off-Broadway play, tells the story of a group of gay men who gather together for a friend's birthday party. They drink too much and suddenly the catty atmosphere of the party becomes venomous. Things are said, friendships take a hit, and someone collapses under the weight of his self-hatred.

There has been so much said about this movie but allow me to say one more thing.

I hated The Boys in the Band. I will always hate it.

I know that it's a landmark in gay cinema and had to be true to life when presenting the lives of gay men back then but I still hate it.

It's not that I hated certain characters, be it super-flamer Emory, hateful Michael, or the prostitute who was supposed to a birthday gift.

It's just that if you turn those catty men into catty women, what do you have? A comedy - which I reviewed a while back - called The Women.

But no matter how catty and vicious those women in that movie were, the love that many of them showed to each other and themselves was a redeeming factor.

There is nothing but self-pity and self-hatred in The Boys in the Band. There is simply nothing redeeming about it except for the fact that it's just a historical commentary on the lives of gay men.

I neglected to post videos of Dan Choi and the sit-in at Nancy Pelosi's office:

Do you agree or disagree with the actions? I'm in the middle but leaning towards the positive. I'm not going all out and calling the folks here heroes but it was very commendable that they took a risky stance because let's face it - sometimes stances like this are needed.

But I'm also for tactics with coordination. People always remember the sit-ins and marches of the African-American civil rights movement but they are always willing to forget that these sit-ins and marches didn't happen spontaneously nor singularly. They were a part of a huge coordinated plan.

I guess I'm saying that I want to see what happens next. Have there been any planning and will we see other actions designed to spur attention to our issues or were these actions the result of scatter shot frustration?

About Me

Alvin McEwen is 46-year-old African-American gay man who resides in Columbia, SC.
McEwen's blog, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, and writings have been mentioned by Americablog.com, Goodasyou.org, People for the American Way, PageOneQ.com, The Washington Post, Raw Story, The Advocate, Media Matters for America, Crooksandliars.com, Thinkprogress.org, Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Melissa Harris-Perry, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Washington Blade, and Foxnews.com.
In addition, he is also a past contributor to Pam's House Blend,Justice For All, LGBTQ Nation, and Alternet.org. He is a present contributor to the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post,
He is the 2007 recipient of the Harriet Daniels Hancock Volunteer of the Year Award and the 2010 recipient of the Order of the Pink Palmetto from the SC Pride Movement as well as the 2009 recipient of the Audre Lorde/James Baldwin Civil Rights Activist Award from SC Black Pride. In addition, he is a three-time nominee of the Ed Madden Media Advocacy Award from SC Pride.